Keyword.TLD vs. Branding.TLD

What works for you?

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BlueWidgets.com - The commercial exchange and information resource for blue widgets.

or

Bomba.com - Blue Widgets commercial exchange and widget resource.

Both have advantages. Both require brand building, one more than the other. Both might have type-in value, again this time the other wins.

How do all the characteristics balance? Which one do you prefer?

[goodroi]

Depends on what you are doing. If you are looking to work on high risk, high performance and short lived sites than branding is not a consideration. If you are looking to create a long term repeat usage site than you need to focus on a branded url. I would put most of the content on the branded url and than grab the keyword domain and launch it with a little content (unique of course) and have it feed into the branded url.

[adfree]

Interesting tactic. Thanks, Anyone else?

[charlienichols]

Agree on the previous post.
If it's going to be a "real company" that is promoted offline, etc. and you will have some customer contact, then go for the "branded" name. You can also do something like have "Branded-keyword.com" and have either a correct redirect, or a simple unique-content intro page.

BTW, true branding is a tough thing to do... you can put a lot of "brand" out there, but unless people associate it with a positive experience over time with a product/service, it's really just colors and copy. What brands do you know off the top of your head? Why do you remember them? How many times and what contexts did you see that brand before you remembered it?

Just a few thoughts... 8-)
Caio, Charlie

[sem4u]

Well a lot of brands have come through via the internet - Google, Yahoo!, Amazon, Lastminute, etc.

So it is possible. Even small sites can and should be branded.

Go with a branded domain that people can remember, rather than that keyword-domain-which-is-very-difficult-to-give-over-the-phone! ;)

[rytis]

brandingkeyword dot tld works for me (without dash)

[charlienichols]

Wouldn't the dash make it easier for SE's to recognize the keyword? Google bolds it etc?

[tedster]

Google will bold a search term in the domain name (or anywhere in the URL) with or without the dash. That looks like a simple character string match to me, and doesn't mean there's any algo boost.

If keyword domains still get a boost on some engines (I assume they do here and there, but I haven't tested it for a long time) it's nowhere near the kind of boost it was in the old days. However, the keyword may still help attract the click from the user.

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"However, the keyword may still help attract the click from the user."

...AND be very memorizable if simple and logic.

[domoftheuk]

Branding.TLD always